Scott Walker Is The New Nixon

So says Wisconsin blogger Deke Rivers.

Imperfect Songs: "MacArthur Park" (1968)

My "New Nixon" colleague Frank Gannon posts a wonderful feature each Sunday: A look back at the popular music of 1968, the year Richard Nixon was elected President. This week's installment is all about the heart-strung songwriting of Jimmy Webb ("By The Time I Get To Phoenix" and "Wichita Lineman" for Glenn Campbell, "Up, Up And Away" for the Fifth Dimension, and so on). And then:



Frank's background on that immortal cut:

[Webb] wrote a song called “MacArthur Park” as a component of a three-part cantata for the popular softcore sunshine rock group The Association. They rejected it, but broody bad boy Irish actor Richard Harris —the Colin Farrell of back in the day— included it on his album "A Tramp Shining."

'MacArthur Park' broke all the rules — it was more than twice as long as the maximum allowed for radio play, its lyrics were nonsensical, and its singer, not to put too fine a point on it, had a limited range. Webb finally gave up after many futile attempts to correct Harris’ mistaken rendering of the song’s title as MacArthur’s Park.

Nonsensical or no -- well, okay, nonsensical -- that's how I rock and rolled in the late 1960s.

It hadn't always been that way. The music of the epoch won me forever when I heard "I Saw Her Standing There" (which Sir Paul is singing right now on the Grammys) in a Rexall drug store in Grosse Pointe in 1964. Born in Detroit, I had the Four Tops (also Grammy-featured) and Supremes in my blood.

In the summer of 1967, we headed for Phoenix, where my mother was starting a new job at the Arizona Republic. The aforementioned Association's "Windy" was in heavy AM rotation as we made our soggy way across the country in mom's white '67 Karmann Ghia and godfather Louis's grey '65 Mustang. By the time we got to Phoenix, the organ intro to the Doors' "Light My Fire" was snaking through the air. "The Beatles" (that's the white album to you and me, kids) was a Christmas gift in 1968. Back east at prep school in 1969-73, somebody introduced me to the blues and Led Zeppelin.

But in 1967, when I was 13, something was going on, and you know just what it was, Mr. Jones, that had turned my musical sensibilities to mush. The vaguely ironic sentimentality of songwriters such as Jimmy Webb and Neil Diamond (there he is at Staples, too) felt grown up, as did the mysterious insinuations in songs like "Lady Willpower" (Gary Puckett and the Union Gap) and "Angel of the Morning" (Marrilee Rush).

The Singer store at the mall on Central Ave. had a wall rack of .45s costing maybe 50 cents. I had about 30, which I labeled, alphabetized, and played on a record player my mother got me at Sear's. "MacArthur Park" was my favorite song for a while. When we returned to Detroit on vacation the following summer, I took my collection along. Our former upstairs neighbor, Peter Johnson, was a church organist who said pop music was an unqualified abomination. I thought I could win him over with "MacArthur Park," however, because it had strings, time signature changes, unfathomable literary pretensions, and some famous British (sic) guy. Peter sat on the floor and listened with me, roaring with with joyful derision when Harris sang:

After all the loves of my life
I'll be thinking of you
And wondering why

Peter, of course, is an Episcopalian (besides being a literary critic). The Nixon angle? A friend and biographer of the late President, Jonathan Aitken, is now married to the former Elizabeth Harris, ex-wife of old Dumbledore himself.

Castro/Nixon

As the Cuban government celebrates the proud achievement of perpetuating Stalinism for 50 years, a reprise of a couple of my New Nixon blog entries from early 2008, as Fidel passed the fatigues to Raul. The first, posted on Feb. 23, was written after a distinguished journalist tried to lay what he characterized as the failure of U.S. policy at the feet of you-know-who:

In this NPR commentary, Daniel Schorr (a distinguished reporter and commentator and regular participant in Nixon Center programs in Washington) argues that 50 years of misguided U.S. policy toward Cuba began when Vice President Nixon, after meeting Fidel Castro, said he was “incredibly naive about communism.” Schorr implies that every misstep in U.S. Cuba policy, from the Bay of Pigs invasion to the Kennedy Administration’s assassination schemes, grew from RN’s observation. That’s hard to believe based on Mr. Nixon’s complete analysis, contained in a long memo he sent President Eisenhower after meeting alone with Castro for three hours in April 1959:

Whatever we may think of him he is going to be a great factor in the development of Cuba and very possibly in Latin American affairs generally. He seems to be sincere. He is either incredibly naive about communism or under Communist discipline — my guess is the former, and as I have already implied his ideas as to how to run a government or an economy are less developed that those of almost any world figure I have met in 50 countries. But because he has the power to lead to which I have referred, we have no choice but at least to try to orient him in the right direction.

When Castro argued that his people didn’t want free elections because they’d produced bad results in the past, Mr. Nixon replied that he should therefore hold elections as soon as possible “to restore the faith of the people in the democratic processes.” Castro soon demonstrated that he had no interest in redeeming Cuban democracy. As for the naive faith in communism Mr. Nixon identified, it laid waste to Cuba’s economy and turned it into Moscow’s pawn (and a potential ground zero) in the missile crisis of 1962.

Mr. Nixon acknowledged the force of Castro’s personality, predicted his regional influence, and tried to persuade him to serve his people. How could he have done better?

And from Feb. 19:

One of Richard Nixon’s last acts as an elder statesman was calling on the U.S. to drop its generations-long embargo of Cuba. In his book Beyond Peace, published posthumously in 1994, he said that it was time for those who hoped squeezing Castro would drive him from power to cry uncle. Fourteen more years of the embargo have amply proved Mr. Nixon right. Instead, he wrote in ‘94, since Castro no longer posed a threat to the U.S. or its interests, “[I]t is time to shift the central focus of our policies from hurting Cuba’s government to helping its people….This means we should drop the economic embargo and open the way to trade, investment, and economic interaction, while insisting that ideas and information be allowed to flow as freely as goods.” Until now, U.S. policymakers have chosen to wait Castro out. As he leaves the stage, perhaps it’s set for a last-act flourish by President Bush: A visit to Havana, Nixon-in-China style.

Too late for W. An opportunity for O?

From Expansion To Retraction

President Nixon meets Deng Xiaopeng at the Carter White House

According to the Chinese media, PE Obama is definitely the new Nixon. This unsigned commentary was published by the official Xinhua New Agency, which means it's either what the government thinks or what the government wants the world to think the government thinks:

I believe that Obama's government will very likely pursue a strategic retraction, meaning the U.S. will very likely enter a period of strategic adjustment.

The last time the U.S. underwent a strategic retraction was in the early 1970s. The starting signals came in then President Richard Nixon's address to the nation on the war in Vietnam on Nov 3, 1969 and the annual foreign affairs report his administration submitted to Congress in Feb 1970.

Nixon said back then the U.S. would still honor its obligations spelled out in the treaties it had signed with its allies, but it was impossible for the U.S. to defend all "free countries" in the world and those under security threats should rely on themselves more than on any other nation, because the U.S. would not plunge into another protracted conflict like the Vietnam War ever again.

That is the so-called Nixon Doctrine, of which the gist is to pursue a strategic retraction by reducing the defense obligations the U.S. had to fulfill around the world. Between then and the early 1980s the country basically remained in strategic retraction, mostly because the U.S. was sinking deeper in the swamp of Vietnam War with the society bitterly split.

How Palin Becomes The New Nixon

I was sort of hoping someone would notice this, from Nov. 14 on The New Nixon. Even less chance that someone will notice it over here, huh? (Hi again, Valerie!)

A friend asked what I meant suggesting that Gov. Palin could be the new Nixon instead of the new Reagan. Here are the two scenarios:

New Reagan: Several weeks before the election, GOP insider Ed Rollins said, somewhat chillingly, that some didn't think Sen. McCain was the right candidate to rebuild the party, an echo of those who felt the same about President Ford in 1976. During 1977-80, Jimmy Carter made such a muck of the economy and foreign policy that a Republican victory was almost inevitable. Having challenged and weakened Ford in the '76 primaries, Ronald Reagan earned the '80 nomination, which was tantamount to winning the election.

Palin and her advisers can't help but have grasped the possibility that Obama will falter or that the sheer magnitude of our economic and international challenges will overwhelm him. Every leading Republican has as well. The internecine sniping at Palin has nothing to do with '08 postmortems and everything to do with '12 prepositioning.

The fallacy is that the party needs a new Reagan -- a candidate with special appeal to social conservatives -- to beat the new Carter. The moderate, pro-choice John Connally or George H. W. Bush would almost certainly have beaten Carter had one of them been nominated. For '12, the GOP doesn't need a far-right champion. It needs an agonized reappraisal of what makes it necessary and viable. Delaying that work in order to coalesce around the present Palin would be a disastrous mistake, as would her hurling herself against an Obama juggernaut in '12 unless she had a reasonable chance of success. From the moment Lehman Bros. failed in mid-September, she and McCain became sacrificial lambs. One self-sacrifice per career is sufficient.

New Nixon: RN would begin with the assumption that Obama will probably not fail. An incumbent is likely to be reelected, and Obama will probably not make Carter's mistakes. Because circumstances may nonetheless hobble him, however, Mr. Nixon would advise Palin to keep her '12 options open, but he'd urge her to fix her attention on '16.

As for the present Palin, he would have enormous respect for the potential she embodies. She has an astonishing reservoir of political capital. But he would have some significant concerns. And so he would almost certainly write her a "Dear Governor Palin" letter beginning, "I am sure you are receiving a great deal of free advice from well-meaning fans and self-appointed advisers around the country. While you are of course under no obligation to give it any consideration whatsoever, I have taken the liberty of enclosing a memorandum containing just a few..." In such circumstances, his insights were usually based in the reliability of his own experience. He would make points such as this:

Take some time off the national stage. The temptation will be to accept too many of the invitations that are flowing in and to go out and challenge her critics. We've probably seen too much of her already just this week. Better to be a little scarce and mysterious. As RN liked to say, it never hurts to leave them wanting more.

Get back to work. Her critics say she's a lightweight fashion plate. Confound them by being an effective governor (or senator).

See the world and meet leaders. RN would consider this crucial -- first, because she's justifiably seen as weak in foreign policy, and second, because it would help her prepare to be in power.

Do favors. Some of RN's most important political work was done in 1964, when he campaigned loyally for the hopeless Goldwater candidacy, and in the midterm elections of 1966, doing favors that were repaid in 1968. In 2012, assuming she doesn't run, Palin should be the most loyal and committed advocate of whomever does. Purely in terms of her own political interests, the worst than could happen is that he would win and she'd have her pick of jobs.

Don't let your enemies define you. Palin provoked panic among abortion rights advocates. The weekend after she was named to the ticket, Andrew Sullivan republished a lie about her son Trig's parentage on his Atlantic Monthly-owned web site that obviously still rankles. Yet Palin would close herself off from growth as a leader by taking it personally. If some people despise her because of her pro-life views, what might she learn from their passion? Some women experience the possibility of restrictions on abortion as an existential challenge. She is comfortable seeing the issue almost solely in terms of the rights of the unborn. What about the rights of the half of the population that wasn't permitted to vote until 1920? Hillary Clinton did herself a tremendous favor three years ago with a speech in which she spoke respectfully of those who hate abortion. Palin should consider making an analogous gesture, both on the abortion and the gay rights fronts.

Read and think. At least from afar, Palin doesn't seem curious or self-critical. Confidence is good in a leader; smugness is not. Mr. Nixon read hungrily all his life and spent long hours in Socratic dialogs with experts, advisers, and aides. While his core principles didn't waiver, his approach to great issues changed with the times. The anti-communist of the 1940s became the internationalist of the 1950s, the course-changing peacemaker of the 1960s and '70s, and the elder statesman of the '80s, respected by all his Democratic and Republican successors in spite of the circumstances of his administration's end.

As Palin matures as a potential national leader, her views will, one hopes, become more moderate and nuanced. Her New Reagan advisers will caution her against permitting this to happen. Lost in the fantasy that Reagan's conservative bona fides (rather than the "R" after his name) won him the '80 election, they'll urge her not to tamper with the time-tested Palin brand. But if she thinks she's fully formed and ready to be President, she'll never make it. She'll fade away prematurely or, at best, squander her potential on a quixotic '12 bid that would probably relegate her to oblivion and her party to another generation in the wilderness. If she uses the next eight years wisely, focused more on substance than on politics, she could truly be the new Nixon, and a winner.

Nixon In 2012

Tony Campbell joins the new Nixon bandwagon:

The bottom line is that the Republican Party needs to forget Sarah Palin and find a Richard Nixon-type candidate in 2012. Richard Nixon was a pragmatic conservative and was able to win two national elections when the electoral map was in a state of flux due to an increase of new minority voters, African-Americans. Richard Nixon used his presidency to add teeth to Affirmative Action policies and to begin Minority and Women Business initiatives in the federal government. Nixon made inroads to this new voting block while keeping his conservative principles of small business growth and development.

Can we leave behind the non-policy ideologue that is embodied by Sarah Palin? Or are we destined to repeat this failure of leadership in the 2012 election cycle? Finding this Nixon-esque balance is not only possible and achievable, with the changing demographics of the electoral map, this balance will be necessary to win back the Congress and the White House.